Seven cruise ships [with Chinese ports of all] are scheduled to enter Kobe Port in February. The "Diamond Princess" was supposed to enter the port on June 6, 14, and 22, but 61 people were found to be infected and remain stranded in Yokohama.

Jump in Coronavirus Cases on Ship Poses a Critical Test for JapanNew York Times|2020-Feb-7The country is scrambling to prevent a larger outbreak even as it prepares for the Tokyo Olympics. Japan already had several confirmed coronavirus cases when a giant cruise ship arrived at the port of Yokohama last week.

On Cruise Ship Quarantined In Japan, Any New Cases Would Reset The Isolation ClockNPT | All Things Considered | February 7, 2020...People quarantined aboard the Diamond Princess have been wondering how long their isolation would last. On Friday, a health official gave an answer they might not like: the quarantine will be extended every time a new case of the Wuhan coronavirus is confirmed on the ship...The coronavirus quarantine that's kept some 3,700 people aboard a cruise ship in Japan is currently set to expire on Feb. 19 — but that date will be reset every time a new case is confirmed on the ship, a WHO official says.More...

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J.A.F.O wrote:Should be fun, can we take the standard zombie issue gear? Machetes and what not?

Ti-Prybar-Zombie-gear.jpg

A Titanium Crowbar is my go-to zombie issue gear.

Japan to let elderly leave quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship soonThe Japan TimesKYODO | Feb. 11, 2020The government is planning to allow elderly passengers as well as those with chronic illnesses to leave the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship soon...... elderly passengers and those with chronic health problems may leave the cruise ship as early as Tuesday morning, the source said.The decision has emerged as passengers have apparently been under stress during their prolonged isolation on the ship. As of last Wednesday, about 80 percent of the 2,666 passengers were age 60 or older, with 215 in their 80s and 11 in their 90s.More...

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passengers have apparently been under stress during their prolonged isolation on the ship

Why is this so hard for We Japanese to understand?

“They will be susceptible to virus infection and risk their lives,” Kami said.

A male passenger aboard the vessel said that some fellow passengers’ health was already eroding.

“Needed medical care is not reaching us even though there are many people whose health is deteriorating,” he said. “We want (the government) to send more doctors, nurses and consultants.”

The man, whose age was not known, pointed out that there is only one extension number for health consultations on the cruise ship, and that the number is difficult to connect to and often involves long waits to receive necessary responses.

Although the government delivered medicine for conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure for 750 people on Sunday, it has not yet been able to get antifebrile medicine to one passenger who has been suffering a high fever.

What kind of security do they have to keep people on the ship? Not that far off from people trying to escape, no?

He had some hard years after the Ģulag Goof-up but he has been selling pro tennis photos to make ends meet. In a way, it's good to see he has moved on with his life with this totally normal Star newspaper article.

Agence France-Presse has conducted interviews with some of the crew members of the Diamond Princess, who were not subject to the same quarantine restrictions on the ship.

They (the crew) were preparing food and delivering meals to cabins, leading some critics to charge they were inadvertently spreading the virus throughout the ship, which has seen more than 600 cases of the potentially deadly COVID-19 disease.

It is still unclear whether the passengers will be forced to remain on board like the passengers who were trapped on the coronavirus-infected cruise ship Diamond Princess for more than two weeks off the coast of Japan.

It is still unclear whether the passengers will be forced to remain on board like the passengers who were trapped on the coronavirus-infected cruise ship Diamond Princess for more than two weeks off the coast of Japan.

Please tell me they can do better than this....

He [ Trump ] said he would prefer if people on the Grand Princess cruise remained on the ship so that US numbers would not go up.

That's true, they do. And it is certainly true that the world has benefited from that. There are people saying it is different this time because so many scientists and experts have left/been forced out by the alleged draining the swamp (ie getting rid of anyone who raises any objections) plus the unfortunate fact that the President is in the habit of making things up on the fly and spreading misinformation when he thinks it will benefit him personally.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Wage Slave wrote:That's true, they do. And it is certainly true that the world has benefited from that. There are people saying it is different this time because so many scientists and experts have left/been forced out by the alleged draining the swamp (ie getting rid of anyone who raises any objections) plus the unfortunate fact that the President is in the habit of making things up on the fly and spreading misinformation when he thinks it will benefit him personally.

Efforts to address the outbreak risk are being undermined by an exodus of scientists and a leader who regularly distorts facts

The Trump administration’s jettisoning of scientific expertise and the president’s habit of spreading misinformation means the US is in a much weaker position to deal with the threat of coronavirus, experts have warned.

There are now at least 149 known coronavirus cases across 13 states, with 11 deaths. US lawmakers have put together an $8.3bn emergency bill to help contain the virus, with laboratories set to be allowed to develop their own coronavirus tests without seeking regulatory approval first.

But the efforts to address the outbreak risk being undermined by three years of a Trump administration that has seen an exodus of scientists from a variety of agencies, the scrapping and remodeling of scientific panels to favor industry interests and a president who regularly dismisses or distorts scientific facts – from the climate crisis to whether the moon is part of Mars – in public.White House's 'muzzled' coronavirus messaging is dangerous, experts sayRead more

“The US is badly positioned; the federal government isn’t up to the task,” said Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “When I learned more about this virus my heart sank because I know the Trump administration doesn’t value basic science, it doesn’t understand it and it tends to reject it when it conflicts with its political narrative.”

Enck said that Trump “doesn’t seem to understand what a clinical trial is”, a reference to a White House meeting with pharmaceutical executives and public health officials on Monday where the president urged the attendees to release the anti-coronavirus drugs they are working on. “So you have a medicine that’s already involved with the coronaviruses, and now you have to see if it’s specifically for this,” Trump said. “You can know that tomorrow, can’t you?”

In the meeting, Trump wondered aloud why the flu vaccine can’t just be used for coronavirus. When told by Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that it could be up to 18 months before a vaccine is available to the public, Trump responded: “I mean, I like the sound of a couple months better, if I must be honest.”

At a political rally in Charlotte later that day, Trump told the crowd that a vaccine will be available “relatively soon” before adding that there are “fringe globalists that would rather keep our borders open than keep our infection – think of it – keep all of the infection, let it come in.”

Trump followed this with an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday in which he said the World Health Organization’s figure of a 3.4% death rate from coronavirus is “really a false number” and that his “hunch” is that the level is “way under 1%.” He offered no evidence for his contradiction of the world’s leading health body.

To be "fair" to Trump, recent figures from South-Korea (which is doing a lot of testing) indicate that the death rate is around 0.6%, not "way under 1%", but still under it. But this figure is based on scientific data, rather than Trump's hunch.

[Trump's] sort of rhetoric, mixing inaccuracies, wild speculation and blunt nationalism, has raised concerns that many Americans, including ardent Trump supporters, are not getting the right information to deal with the virus outbreak.

“The scientific ‘truth’ about the virus may not match what the administration wants to hear, so the scientific ‘truth’ is at risk of being compromised before it is made public,” said Wendy Wagner, a University of Texas expert in how policy-makers use science.

Wagner noted there are no requirements that a president provide accurate information about a public health issue, enabling Trump to freely misreport that a vaccine will shortly be available.

This situation is exacerbated by a downsizing of scientific expertise within the US government. The EPA’s staff numbers, for example, are a third smaller than they were when Trump took power. In the first two years of the Trump administration, more than 1,600 federal scientists left various government agencies, according to Office of Personnel Management employment data.

The administration has attempted even deeper cuts: Trump’s 2021 budget proposal, submitted just days after international alarm was raised over the coronavirus, included a 16% reduction in funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Trump has said that the CDC and other agencies could rapidly restaff if needed but this concept runs counter to the standard practices of government-run research.

“Since Trump has been trying to shrink them, moreover, I worry that the agency directors are currently not well-positioned to act swiftly to expand the staff,” Wagner said. “The agencies may also fail to attract the best scientists going forward because of Trump’s poor track record with the ‘deep state’ and science more generally.”

Enck said that previous disasters, such as hurricanes, have seen a “seamless” response from federal, state and local governments but the current situation may now require states, businesses and academia to fill the void where once the federal government provided leadership.

“There’s definitely been a brain drain in this administration, there has been an attack on science that doesn’t bode well for what we are seeing now,” she said. “Others are going to have to step up. The best thing the president could do right now is to stop talking.”

Joel Clement, a former policy director at the Department of Interior who left government after the Trump administration reassigned him from his climate-focused role, said the administration had undermined efforts to deal with threats such as pandemics.

Clement said Trump should bolster public trust in the civil servants dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, restore the scientific strength of the federal government and fund programs that will help prevent the spread of threats like the virus.

“In other words, he needs to do the opposite of what we know he will do,” Clement said. “He is more concerned about the safety of his fragile ego than he is about the safety of Americans.”

Yeah. Busted. I'm a member of the sneering, commie, liberal metropolitan elite with no understanding of how ordinary decent working people live. Or think. I had actually forgotten where I saw that line of thought though so thanks for the reminder.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.